Straddling the Hemispheres and Haggling in Otavalo Market

Monument to Equatorial Line 

 Yesterday we managed to grab the Quito bus out to the little pueblo La Mitad del Mundo which has a monument dedicated to the Equatorial line, the site where it was first said to have been located, although in reality it’s 200 meters off.  All things considered, it’s pretty darn close for what they had to go with back in the day, which was a protractor, duct tape, and a kerosene lantern.  O.k., I made that up.  It’s got a tower to go up and view whatever you might see, but we declined.

Inti-Nan Real Equatorial Line

We then headed on to Inti-Nan, a museum actually on the Equator nearby, which houses some cool gimmicks that you can do given the magnetic activity, like the which way the water drains, clockwise in the southern hemisphere, counterclockwise in the north.  We couldn’t balance the egg on the nailhead though.  Also they have some shrunken heads(cabezas reducidas) from an indigenous group that used to do it up until 50 years ago.  We volunteered for shrunken bellies, but they weren’t as amused as we were.  Last night we hit a plaza for some nightlife called Plaza Foch, full of people celebrating Ecuadorean pride week, and suffered through some group singing songs I never wanted to hear again from the ‘80s/’90s like 4 Non-Blondes and Alanis Morissette, but a few drinks helped kill the pain.

Shrunken Heads!

Volcano Imbabura near Otavalo

Plaza in Otavalo

Today we grabbed a cab and headed out to Otavalo, a town about 2 hours from Quito that houses Ecuador’s largest outdoor market, a shoppers’ paradise, but we took it easy since we’ll have to lug that crap everywhere.  The landscape views surrounding the town were breathtaking and I took a lot of video and photos for class since we teach about it, and it was fun to mix it up with the local people, haggle for textiles and paintings, and see some crazy stuff they eat that you couldn’t pay me to.  Mike about hurled when he saw the huge larvae that people fry up and munch on.  This evening, we grabbed what I guess may be the best meal of our trip at the restaurant El Achiote near our hotel.  It rivaled last year’s Argentinean dining experience.  Tomorrow we leave at the crack to the airport to fly south to Cuenca, where we will be renting an apartment and studying for the next 5 weeks before hopefully traveling to the Galapagos islands.  Tomorrow Spain plays Italy for the European Cup final at 1:30, so we’ll go out and watch that after we settle in.  Viva Espana!    

Larvae - Que Rico!

Textiles

Our favorite word of the trip is that there is a town called Jipijapa (hippyhoppa), which is used in a Spanish language tongue-twister which I thought was just a made-up word.  It has replaced Jujuy!(who-huy) - a town in the north of Argentina that sounds like a hooray sound from last summer as the word of the trip.  It amuses us simple folk, what can I say, other than... Jipijapa!